


The Last Time

by fawatson



Category: A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/pseuds/fawatson
Summary: What Tobe saw.





	The Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> **Request:** I’ve had to read "A Rose for Emily" three or four times in my school days, and I never regret it. It is really the perfect horror story, where all the components are there and the ending is inevitable, but still deeply horrific. When I saw it in the tagset, I knew I had to ask for it. As interesting as the story is, I’ve always seen it as a one-sided tale. Faulkner tells us what the (white) townspeople of Jackson think and feel about Miss Emily, but what about the black ones? Maybe Tobe, who didn’t talk to the (white) townsfolk, talked to his family, his neighbours?
> 
>  **Acknowledgements:** Many thanks to Sharon for beta-reading. 
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I do not own these characters and make no profit by them.

The first time I entered the Grierson house I was 10. Ma had been there many times, of course, but she’d never taken me. Master Grierson had told her he needed a boy for the stable and garden that summer so she brought me along. I came in by the back porch, through the kitchen and along the corridor past the pantry to the front hallway. He saw me in his study which lay opposite the drawing room. I’d seen the big houses since I was little, known which one my Ma worked in, of course. But being _inside_ was a whole new experience. Master Grierson’s study was lined with books and smelled of cigars and the beeswax used on his big mahogany desk. I’d never seen so many books, not even at school, definitely not in anyone’s home. 

I stood before his desk, mouth open, staring. 

“What’s your name, boy?” he barked at me. 

That brought my attention back to him. A few questions later and I was hired, told to call him “Master” not “Mister” and myself renamed. 

“ _That’s_ not something I’ve a mind to remember,” he announced when I told him what I was called. And so I became Tobe. 

The Master handed my wages to Ma every Saturday and she handed me a dollar for myself. The first week I took my two younger brothers and sister down to the drug store and bought us all ice-creams. The rest I put in an old leather wallet I hid under some floor boards in the room I shared with my brothers. 

It was two years before I stepped foot in the house again. That summer and the next, my place was the stable where I worked hard mucking out the horse the family kept, and polishing the buggy, or raking and weeding the backyard. Not that the Griersons called it that. _They_ had a garden, even if there wasn’t a lot in it except one old tree and some grass and empty flowerbeds. And the long hedge surrounding the rear of the property – I spent a lot of time trimming that. I didn’t see much of the family, just Miss Emily occasionally as she walked round the garden, stepping carefully over any rough bits in her fine shoes, or her Ma as she sat on the bench under the beech tree with her embroidery. For all he wanted the garden kept tidy, Master Grierson never used it. They weren’t much of a family to have the neighbours over for garden parties – kept themselves to themselves for the most part. It seemed a lonely kind of existence and I couldn’t help but be struck by the difference between them – just the three rattling round in a big house – and us – four kids and two parents in a tiny two room shack. 

The summer I turned 12, I went to work for the Griersons full-time. That wasn’t what I’d expected to be doing. Ma had had big plans for me to do more schooling with the minister and then go up north. But Pa was kicked in the head by a mule, and when he came around, he just wasn’t the same. Whatever I could earn was needed to support two younger brothers and my sister. The Griersons’ outdoor man had gone to live with his daughter on a farm bordering the Yoknapatawpha River. Given my previous summer jobs I was the obvious choice to replace him. Once again, I stood before that mahogany desk in the study, answered a few questions, and was told to start the next day. I would have every Sunday off and the first Monday of every month too. My pay still went direct to Ma but she only gave me 25c from it now. Every penny was needed to make ends meet at home.

There was a big kerfuffle the morning Mrs Grierson was found dead. I was sent to fetch Doc Mattison just in case there was something he could do. Ma said anyone could just touch her hand and know she was long gone she was so cold and it was no use. But that’s white folks for you: had to have a doctor to tell you what was plain for anyone with sense to see. Still he made himself useful in the end when he slipped Ma some laudanum for Miss Emily. She was real overset on account of she was the one who found her Ma lying in her bed. Master Grierson said he had no time for hysterics and shut himself in his study with the undertaker. Ma washed Mrs Grierson and laid her out; and once the undertaker put her in the box, I helped bring her downstairs that last time. 

Course I went to the funeral – the whole town turned out for it. There was potato salad and pies brought round to the house from all the white lady-folk the day before, and there was eulogising by the white men-folk the morning of the day itself in church. The undertaker had brought the coffin in the night before and set it at the front of the church, where it sat all the way through the service with Mrs Grierson smiling in death in a way she _never_ smiled in life. Then Colonel Sartoris and five of the town elders carried the coffin down through the aisle and along the path through the churchyard till they set it down in the corner where all the past generations of Griersons were buried in a massive stone crypt carved with angels round the doorway and a statue of Jesus on top looking down with a sad face. There was just one space left after they took Mrs Grierson’s coffin down through the door and placed it in its niche. 

It was just a few weeks later that Pa caught a chill that went to his chest and he died. He’d been failing for a while, so a body would be forgiven for thinking his death would come as a blessed relief but Ma pined and was dead herself in two months. I might have thought about setting out for pastures greener than dusty old Jefferson, but Ma made me promise on her deathbed to see after my brothers Ulysses and William, till they was old enough to strike out for themselves, and to make sure Cissy didn’t marry no no-count lazy layabout. Uncle Jeremiah took the boys in; they helped out on his farm and bunked in with his own sons, topping and tailing in a big double bed in one room. Cissy went to stay with Grannie Hattie, sleeping in a trundle bed in her room so’s she would hear if Grannie needed something in the night. I found myself living in the room back of the disused hayloft of the Grierson’s stable. It was cold in winter and stuffy in summer but it was mine, which was a blessing all things considered. That’s how Ma had brought us all up: to count our blessings and be thankful for what we got, not dwell on what we hadn’t. I had Sundays off and we four spent those days together every week and were grateful for every one of them. 

To my surprise Master Grierson didn’t hire no-one to cook once Ma passed on. It was my first inkling maybe the Griersons didn’t have the money I’d always reckoned they had. That plus the fact he sold the horse and buggy. At first Miss Emily tried to do the cooking but she’d never been taught how, so in the end I took over. I spent more time inside than outside now. With no horse to muck out or groom, there just wasn’t as much that needed doing outside and no one would expect Miss Emily to do the heavy cleaning inside the house. Master Grierson would give Miss Emily the housekeeping money every Friday and then she’d come find me “to give instructions” was how she put it, but really she’d just hand it over. That was the other way I knew: as time went on she handed me less money. 

Master Grierson keeled over one day in the middle of an evening meal. They still used the formal dining room every night. The table could have seated twelve and beyond was a fancy marble-topped sideboard that displayed crystal decanters and silver candelabras. It would have made more sense to sit in the kitchen, but no Grierson ever sat in the kitchen to eat. Or they could have used the small round table in one corner of the drawing room, but he wouldn’t hear of it. So he sat in the armchair at the head of the table and she sat in the first chair to his left and I was supposed to stand in between and a bit behind them both, and pass the serving plates that they could have handed between themselves quicker and easier than I ever could. Master Grierson’d eaten well that day, stuffing himself full of roast pork with crackling and potatoes and collard greens, while he issued orders to Miss Emily about what she should be doing just like he always did; but as he tried to stand up, he staggered and clutched at his chest and fell back in the chair dead as dead could be. Nonetheless, in Grierson family tradition, I was despatched to get the doctor to see what could be done for him while Miss Emily had hysterics. 

Her Pa’s death hit Miss Emily real hard, not ‘cause she mourned him which was kind of what the white folks assumed but ‘cause there was all sorts she had to do that she just wasn’t used to. She’d been raised to be a wife and mother like her own mother before her; but she’d stayed the girl at home when no one came up to scratch, so she never really grew into the woman she might have been. Her mother had had an annuity from _her_ parents which had died with her. Her father had had what he earned – which had been good money at one time, but hadn’t been much the last few years. Plus he had money from investments left him by _his_ father which, of course, came to Miss Emily after his death. Colonel Sartoris came over one afternoon to explain them to her, not that it made much more sense to her after his explanation than it had before. I could tell that from what little I could hear drifting down the corridor to the kitchen where I waited to clear up after the tea she offered him. Not only had Miss Emily never earned a penny in her life, she’d never even _handled_ a penny. Anything she bought at the shops – the few ribbons she chose for new lace caps, or perfumed talcum for her face, or the watercolours for her drawings – it all went on account. Now all of a sudden she had to deal with the accounts from the local shops and businesses, the first of which was the undertaker’s bill for her father’s funeral. 

Money she might not have, but Miss Emily did live in a house stuffed to the rafters with the acquisitions of past generations of more affluent Griersons. As I pointed out to her a couple of weeks later when she told me the bank said there wasn’t enough money in the account that day to pay my wages. She didn’t leave the house for six months for the shame of it (or so she said) but the ugly old silver soup tureen that hadn’t been used in years left with me in the market basket that Friday. It was right heavy to carry and bowed me over like an old man, but it made a mint at the dealer I took it to. From there on in I had Fridays _and_ Sundays off each week. 

Course I never sold none of it locally. She had her pride. I’d hitch a ride over to Memphis Junction and then some more beyond to sell it before hitching back. It meant I was the first person in Jefferson to see Homer Barron, some while before he arrived in Yoknapatawpha County. He was a-kissing the hands of a couple of pretty young things who were simpering and giggling. I heard the gossip about him _and_ them. He turned up in town a few weeks later when the firm he worked for had won the contract to beautify Jefferson by paving sidewalks and building a fountain in the town square in front of the Court House. I was just a nigger servant so he didn’t remember _me_ but I remembered _him_.

None of the locals may have met him but Homer Barron’s reputation preceded him; he left at least one of those pretty young things in the family way when he skipped counties. So he was a bit lonelier in Jefferson until, that is, he met Miss Emily. For an old maid the wrong side of forty she sure could flutter her eyelashes with the best of ‘em. 

I knew no good could come of it, and I was right. First the Baptist minister came a-calling. I knew him well – prayed in the back row of his church every Sunday. But Miss Emily didn’t; Griersons had always prayed in the Episcopal church. She was so affronted she didn’t even offer him any refreshments. Next her cousins from Alabama descended on her all worried about her virtue. They sat in her drawing room and drank her tea and criticised her embroidery and clucked their disapproval over this and gave unwanted advice over that while they smiled their crocodile smiles at Homer Barron and never _once_ noticed that every time he left the house some snuff box, or tortoiseshell brush and comb set, or gold tie pin left with him. But _I_ noticed, and I knew she did, but she so wanted to hope and believe she turned a blind eye. 

Miss Emily took it quite calmly when I came back from one of my weekly jaunts with the news Homer Barron was already married with five little-uns. It was just chance I heard about it, ‘cause normally I went north on my buying and selling trips; but this week I got a ride south to Mottson. I recognised the rose quartz hat pin on the woman sat in the window of the tea shop: plump little woman with lots of pale brown hair piled high on the top of her head and a hat perched on top secured with that very same pin Miss Emily’s mother had worn in her hat every day she went to church. I asked around; Mottson folk was real chatty about how she come from decent folk but had to get married to a northerner who come to town on a paving contract twelve years back. Her Pa owned the bank and he bought them a house and settled a goodly sum on her, tying it up with all sorts of legal strings so her husband couldn’t get his paws on it. 

Miss Emily didn’t say nothing when I told her the news. For about a day I thought she was going to turn a blind eye to _that_ too. But then things got moving. The cousins left. _He_ left. And then a few days later he came back. I opened the door to him and announced him to Miss Emily who was sat using her watercolours to paint what she could see through the bay window perfectly well without the need for no picture (not that hers looked much like it anyway). Homer Barron's face creased with his wide toothy smile as he bowed over Miss Emily’s hand, turning it over to press a kiss on the inside of her wrist, before he leaned over to kiss her cheek. I would have given twenty dollars to hear what was said next but after I brought a fresh bottle of brandy from what was left Master Grierson’s stock I was told firmly to close the door on my way out. He was still there when I locked up and went to my room in the stable. And he was there the next morning when I Iaid the table for breakfast, though he wasn’t smiling. For the second time I went upstairs at the Griersons, this time carrying a body up rather than down. 

I waited then, on tenterhooks for a while, to see what would happen next. But nothing happened. Miss Emily didn’t go out at all, but then until Homer Barron had come calling, she hadn’t been in the habit of going out much anyway. Nobody stopped by to pass the time of day with her; but then Miss Emily had never had many visitors. Her father had never encouraged it. I missed a few trips out of town waiting to see what would happen. Two months later the roof lost a good half of its shingles in the big storm and Miss Emily needed to pay someone to fix it, so I packed up her mother’s 12 place-setting set of antique bone china that the first Grierson to settle in Jefferson had brought over when they emigrated from Yorkshire 150 years ago and set off – to the north. _Definitely_ the north. 

Once they were old enough, both my brothers set out for northern climes. They wrote back now and then to tell me how well they was doing in Detroit and to urge me to join them. I envied them their freedom; but Cissy still stayed in Jefferson, loyal to Grannie Hattie who clung onto life long past everybody’s expectations largely because of Cissy’s devoted care. I’d made my Ma a promise and I’m a man of my word. So I stayed, working for Miss Emily who paid me in kind rather than cash. I’d sort of taken over old Master Grierson’s study. Miss Emily didn’t want it; she sat across the hall in the drawing room, while I read my way through his library, getting myself the education my Ma had always hoped the preacher would provide. 

Eventually Cissy found herself the man of her dreams. He was a modern educated man, who’d been to the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Tennessee and was an ordained minister – a widower with two grown children (boy and girl) who wasn’t interested in marrying some flighty slip of a young woman but valued my sister precisely because she’d willingly shouldered responsibility for her elderly relative all those years. Quietly, slowly, persistently he courted her until, a week after Grannie Hattie’s death she agreed to marry him. Old Mrs Grierson’s diamond wedding ring and the sterling silver tea service paid for Cissy’s wedding but it was the books from the study that paid for the house I bought for her and her new husband up in Detroit. 

It had been a long wait. She’d never been exactly young as long as I’d worked there – young-ish would have been the charitable description of her when I started working for the Griersons. Now Miss Emily was grey-haired and fat and a bit unsteady on her feet. She loved her tea, and her almond biscuits that my own Ma had shown me how to make years ago. She was a little bit sick; but a life full of disappointments didn’t give her much will to live. I waved down little Lionel Beauregard in the morning, as he walked past on his way to school, and sent him off with a message to the minister, then packed up the canteen full of silver flatware, which was about the only thing left (save Master Grierson’s magnificent old mahogany desk) worth anything much in that house, before I opened the door to the first of the ladies who called, and walked through the house and out the back door for the last time, heading for my future: Lincoln Sartoris, citizen of Detroit.


End file.
